My husband and daughter took the assessment with me, and we tried to guess how each of us would answer. We found that we know each other well, which was comforting. It wouldn’t be much fun to learn at this stage that my soul mate would rather party with a hundred people than have an intimate dinner with a few trusted friends. Or that my daughter isn’t a bookworm after all, but spends her time secretly updating a Facebook page, tweeting, planning her wardrobe and fussing with her hair.

But a disturbing truth emerged from the assessment. I am a “conditional introvert.”

Okay, I made that up. There’s no such term. But there should be. Here are some examples from the assessment:

Item #5: I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me.

At first blush, yes, I do dislike small talk. I would rather talk about meaningful things than whether the Giants are going to win tonight (probably not, unfortunately) or where to get the best mani-pedi (I have no idea. I’ve never had one).

But I do purposely engage in small talk with those I don’t know very well. It’s not the content I value, it’s the distance it helps me create between the person I’m speaking to and my true self. Exchanging small talk is a way to avoid intimacy, and sometimes that’s precisely my intent. I want separateness, distance, and to keep myself intact. So I smile and nod and say things that don’t really matter, just to keep from having to say things that do.

Item #3:I enjoy solitude.

Ahem. Well. I’m overwhelmed in crowds, and the sound of people talking sometimes wears me down. Having to interact a lot seems to chip away at some essence that only rejuvenates when I have retreated. But that does not mean that I wish to be alone very much. I have spent many years in a battle with solitude-based-panic.

Plus, I am a teacher of sixth graders. I love the energy of the pre-teen. I enjoy their jokes, how they dress and the books they love. I have a class of thirty-two of them this year, and going to work is fun. Yes, I am tired at the end of the day. But it’s MY day.

That’s the key. I am the teacher, not a fellow passenger on a bus full of strange pre-teens careening down a road to who-knows-where. My students’ conversations are not irrelevant: they inform me of who they are and what they care about, both of which matter a lot. When students share during class, they (mostly) follow basic rules of conduct. There is order. My order.

Just like purposeful small talk, being the boss in a crowd rewards me when solitude doesn’t.

I know that this assessment is a jumping off point. But if I were to rewrite it, I’d structure the items differently, teasing out intent, looking for the hidden feelings we introverts harbor. I’d offer choices that reveal what introverts are truly after: meaningful connections, predictable interactions, and intimacy with those we have vetted. And the power to retreat when we need to.

Item #21: I love people, but I most enjoy social interactions when I control them.

“If I diminish other people’s perceptions, do I diminish them? Not just their arguments. Them.”

Were this a critical essay, I’d offer a premise, confirm or refute it by essay end, and do so in a hopefully convincing, interesting and structurally sound way.

Spoiler alert.

These 539 words are nothing of the sort. A family member’s perception of an event spurred this exploration. I have no clue where I’m going with it or what I’m trying to say.

Perception. Perception. Perception. Hmmm. Maybe start with Point of View?

Say I’m the narrator in a story told in first-person present tense. There is that point of view rule that discourages mindreading, unless of course your narrator has the gift of telepathy, x-ray vision or perhaps hears voices.

This is not to say I can’t be a gifted narrator who is capable of sensing thought or emotion. But since I can’t actually slip inside another character’s mind, I might note my perception as an inference with clarifiers such as “it seems like” “my guess is” (fill in the blank).

Why is it, then, that in real life, in moments of self-doubt, I rarely clarify an inference? I’m instantly omniscient. I emphatically tell others precisely what they are doing or thinking or feeling. “You are not listening to me;” “You don’t want to read this,” “I am boring you;” “You are screening my calls;” “You don’t think I’m doing what I want to be doing,” etc., etc., ad nauseam.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in this tendency.

One writer, Jeff Goins, who blogged about truth and fiction, said, “Every day, we lie to ourselves to avoid facing the discomfort of our anxiety, hurt, and betrayal (just to name a few feelings).”

Sounds like survival tactics to me.

I would pile on Jeff’s notion and say, “Every day, we create truths that project or blame our emotional discomfort about ourselves, about our perceived betrayal, hurt or anxiety by others on others.”

If I were a computer possessing no historical data from which to draw conclusions, I could describe that moment factually. Instead, I am human with petabytes of data stored from even before birth that will distort or clarify or perhaps even amplify said moment.

Intellectual data—my skill sets, values, education, and experience;
Personality filters—am I introverted or extroverted, analytical or a sensor, insecure or confident?
Physical and emotional filters, both historical and immediate, which affect my current mood.

But here’s the rub. Even though my perceptions are filtered, not “just the facts” and likely not the pure “truth,” they are real to me and they are uniquely mine.

So do my perceptions define me? Or does my self define my perceptions?

Eh. Who cares. It just leads me to my real question:

If I diminish other people’s perceptions, do I diminish them? Not just their arguments. Them.

If I had a super power, I’d choose to ACTUALLY see the world through the eyes of anyone I choose.

But I don’t. The best I can do is to respect how they see it.

It may not be the pure truth, but it’s their truth.

539 words. Minutes you will never recover. How do you perceive this rambling?